So now I’ve had some time to digest the series finale of Lost, and I’m still not sure whether I like it or not.

I liked the way they ended it on the island, with Jack dying and his eye closing. It wraps up his journey and ties the story into the beginning. You could kind of see it coming when Kate asked Jack if she will see him again, and he doesn’t answer. So that was good.

But I was disappointed there were a bunch of questions left unanswered. In February, I wrote a post about 20 questions I wanted answered on Lost before the series was up. These were big questions, and some should have been answered to help provide closure.

Guess how many were answered.

One. They answered the question of who were Adam and Eve, the corpses in the cave. They never explained why Walt was special, or what the numbers meant, or why the Others killed the Dharma workers, or why the island could heal some people or why could people not have babies on the island.

I don’t think they knew how to answer everything, so they ignored it rather than try. I understand their thinking is that nobody finds out the answers to everything in life. But the thing is, the show is not a life. It’s a show! Answer a question for pete’s sake!

That’s why I’m torn on the show. It wrapped up nicely in terms of the final scene, but it didn’t wrap up the series at all.

Here are some other general thoughts about the show:

• I remember a few episodes into the first season, everyone was guessing the castaways were in purgatory, so much so that the producers had to come out and say no, they’re not in purgatory. Maybe they were supposed to be initially, and was changed when people quickly figured it out. The flashsideways was a nice nod to that theory (they were in purgatory before going to heaven).

• I was wondering why so many of them were breaking into huge grins when they remembered their island life in the flashsideways, which didn’t make sense to me at first. Why would Sun and Jin be smiling about remembering their island trip (rooted in jealousy the first season, away from each other for four seasons, killed in a sub accident, and Jin never got to see his daughter: how could anyone be smiling after remembering that)? But at that stage, they know they’re going into heaven, and they get a sense of pure joy because of it.

• Why weren’t some of the Losties in purgatory at the end? I think this actually makes sense more than anything else. They met in a church before going to heaven because the time on the island was the biggest part of their lives. Michael is stuck in limbo on the island. Walt may have lived another 80 years, so he may be going to heaven with a closer group of friends. Ana Lucia may not be going to heaven. Mr. Eko may have decided to go to heaven with his childhood friends, before he became a bad guy.

• Ben never went inside the church because he’s not going to heaven, and he knows it. He doesn’t belong there. He killed a lot of people, or were responsible for a lot of deaths. He was a bad guy throughout much of the show. Everything he did, he did for himself. That’s not the type of people who generally get into heaven, from what I understand. (Note: Some people are saying that Ben is waiting for Alex, because that’s his person he wants to go to heaven with.)

• Why was Sayid not with Nadia at the end? We spent six years learning about how much Sayid loves Nadia. He found her and married her after being rescued as part of Oceanic 6. He tried to avenge her death by killing everyone associated with it in Widmore’s group. We’re supposed to be sad that Sayid and Nadia aren’t together in the flashsideways. Yet, moments before he goes to heaven, he runs into Shannon, whom he pretty much had a one-night stand with, and that’s the love of his life? That doesn’t make sense to me.

• How do they explain getting off the island to the ones who survived? More of a curious thing, but what does Kate say to people when she gets back to civilization. She’s already been rescued once as part of Oceanic 6. Are people going to believe that she was going back to rescue others from that crash? You have survivors from the Oceanic 815 crash (Claire, Sawyer), the second plane crash (Frank), a freighter blowing up (Miles) and a slave ship (Richard). I would have loved to have heard their explanation.

• Speaking of Richard, I wonder if continued to live forever, or if he started aging normally once he left the island for good.

• Jack needs to become a better fighter. Twice he had the fake Locke down and choking him, to twice let Locke grab a weapon and hit/stab him with it. Geez Jack. Don’t you learn from your mistakes?

• There were way too many commercials. I think they expanded it to 2.5 hours to get an extra 1.5 hours of commercials in there. It was brutal.

• It was kind of fitting that the Fake Locke ended up dying almost the exact same way Real Locke was paralyzed: Falling from a huge height.

• If Vincent did lead Rose and Bernard to the well to find Desmond, is that a nod to Lassie? “What’s that boy? Little Desmond is stuck in the well and needs help? Lead the way.”

• A few seasons back, Desmond was stuck flashing through time, and needed a constant to be able to be rescued. That is what needed to happen to the castaways in the flashsideways to be able to remember everything. Claire and Kate didn’t remember until Claire gave birth (a constant with the island life). For Sun, it was her ultrasound with Juliet. For Locke, it was wiggling his toes. For others, it was an embrace, a kiss or a moment they shared with a love one on the island. For Jack, it was finding his dad’s empty coffin.

So overall, a good episode to wrap up what happens to the characters, but not a good final series wrap-up.

Yeah seriously – how did you miss the Richard thing? I loved that resolution of his character.
You have some good questions, but we obviously watch the show very differently. I just blogged (http://www.cherylbrink.com) about how the end showed that the characters were the important thing – and really the only thing that mattered. All the other questions aren’t the point of the show.
And the reason all the people in the church were together is that their time on the island was the most important of their lives – it was the crucial stage that changed them and connected them together. The other people on Oceanic 815 (Ana Lucia, etc) didn’t have that, and were therefore not part of the group.